Sunday, November 04, 2007

Bibleroom Brawl!

UPDATED: Hitchens below is being my favorite bad boy, but Ed at Dispatches from the Culture Wars shows the sensitive and eloquent side of Hitchens as he reflects upon the death of a soldier in Iraq. I have been opposed (often reluctantly) to this war, but I also cannot stomach the thought of a humiliating defeat - which could already be inevitable. And I am sympathetic to those who offer sincere and thoughtful reasons for supporting this war.

Therefore I offered my own conflicting thoughts about Hitchens and his support for the Iraq War. Undoubtedly some people are going to be shocked and appalled that I do not oppose every war for any reason at all - I think that's unrealistic, and naive.---Let's have some fun.

I came across this site while trying to find His Creepiness, Father George Rutler, that elusive priest with the robes and the officious accent, who used to be on EWTN. I never forgot him; and I could not remember his name; all I remember was his pinched voice and haughty demeanor, and that costume! You don't see that on EWTN anymore. (Now, due to the Catholic church's desperate drive to stave off the forces of the evangelical movement that's bleeding it of members, EWTN is all happy, good-looking young priests who pose laughing in front of the Dome of the Rock.)

Father George Rutler versus Christopher Hitchens! And check out this blog; check out the comments (around the internet, not so much on this site). I didn't grow up Catholic, so I was completely unprepared for the near-orgasmic response of these bloggers (kids?) who gush, "Oh, Father, you're so awesome...you really gave it to Hitchens...you're incredible...blah, blah." Yuck! Do Catholics worship priests? What are they, rock stars?

FATHER RUTLER: I have met saints. You cannot explain the existence of saints without God. I was nine years chaplain with Mother Teresa [inaudible]. You have called her a whore, a demagogue. She’s in heaven that you don’t believe in, but she’s praying for you. [Didn't we just find out about Mother Theresa's doubts about God?] If you do not believe in heaven, that’s why you drink. [emphasis mine]CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Excuse me?

FATHER RUTLER: That’s why you drink. God has offered us happiness, all of us. And you will either die a Catholic or a madman, and I’ll tell you the difference. [emphasis mine]

And secondly, I’m an officer with this club. And this conversation has been beneath the dignity of this club. . . .

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, it is now. . . . It is now.

FATHER RUTLER: And I’d just say that…

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Fine host you turned out to be.

FATHER RUTLER: …this club, we’ve had very open discussion. But we’ve never heard such vulgarity and bigotry.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Till now.

FATHER RUTLER: And I am, I don’t want to see this in this club again. And I think I represent the officers of this noble…

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Your claim to know what a [saint] is or what heaven is is as absurd as your [inaudible] arrogance, your unkindness and your lack of hospitality. . . . You should be ashamed. . . . And you are supposed to represent a church of charity and kindness?

Ooh! Torch 'em, Hitchie! This is the man who flipped off the audience on Bill Maher. And now he's being mean to the man who heard the confessions of firefighters dying on September 11!

(Heard the confessions. Holy crap, I need to repeat that. Heard the confessions! Confessions? From firefighters on 9/11? Holy fuck, firefighters have "sins" to "confess" after saving people's lives on 9/11? Like what? That one stole a piece of cheese from another's lunch box? That they may have had some mean thoughts about the totally fucked bastards who rammed planes into the World Trade Center towers? And believers wonder why religion sets off atheists! "Heard the confessions," good grief.)

My goodness, Hitchens is not out to convinced society that atheists are all nice, family-oriented (though he has a wife and kid), suburban, mainstream Americans. Hitchens is not the man to make that argument, and I am not the woman to make it, either.

I have disagreed with Hitchens' stance on the war but I love a good scrapper, I must admit. Certainly, I prefer him to a man who has no need of physical intimacy with any woman (or man/boy, although one never knows these days). Hitchens is the Earnest Hemingway of atheism. And yes, I met him - very charming he is, with a self-depreciating sense of humor (you know - humor?), even after having tied a few on. Yeah, I'd love to see Father Rutler after a few drinks.

23 Comments:

Anonymous said...

This is an old story and frankly, it did not get a lot of press. It happened on May 1 of this year and was at an event hosted by that well meaning person, David Horowitz. And it seems that it did not hit the net until September 19.

http://www.poe.com/?p=1286

It seems that this exchange set off the good father.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: What if I say, Everyone in the country knows that female genital mutilation is a horror show? And it should rightly be a federal crime. But male genital mutilation is a filthy Jewish practice. Doesn’t sound good, does it, to say that? You know how sensitive we can be. But what else?

And that happens to be my view. And I am damned if I’ll become an American in order to be told I can’t express it. Okay?

PETER COLLIER: It is true, of course, that genitally mutilated males have a six times lower frequency of getting AIDS in Africa, for instance, right?

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, there would be less AIDS if the Islamic and Catholic authorities didn’t say that AIDS may be bad but condoms are worse, which is the religious preachment. And by the way — I suppose we may as well get this out of the way — the jolly old foreskin –

PETER COLLIER: The foreskin.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: — the foreskin itself –

PETER COLLIER: Oh, let’s get right to it. Okay.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: When in doubt — as they always say — when in doubt, talk dick. The foreskin can be loosened. The foreskin can be loosened, and even slightly snipped — in order, for cleaning purposes. But it doesn’t have to be violently torn and excised, in the Maimonides recommendation, which is, by the way — when Maimonides mandates it, he says, not to prevent you from getting a filthy disease; it’s so that you will feel the least sexual pleasure that’s consistent with making another Jew, through a hole in the sheet. Okay? (2)

Seems that many there thought this was antisemitic. It seems to me that Hitchens said the the practice was filthy, not that Jews were filthy.

It was Rutler who started the exchange in response to Hitchens' speech.FATHER RUTLER: I have met saints. You cannot explain the existence of saints without God. I was nine years chaplain with Mother Teresa [inaudible]. You have called her a whore, a demagogue. She’s in heaven that you don’t believe in, but she’s praying for you. If you do not believe in heaven, that’s why you drink.

I want to know how the good father knows that Teresa is praying for Hitchens? I also want to know how the good father knows that atheists are more prone to drink?

An other site had this to say."Hitchens would then be a very poor example of the supposedly wonderful, kind, generous, pacific world of atheism."http://www.penraker.com/archives/010137.html

I think that Hitchens would be upset at being called a pacifist.

What is really funny about Hitchens is how everyone tries to put him in a simple box. The more reactionary leftist try to paint him as a Horowitz type. But I do not see Hitchens engaging in the same distortions and outright lying as Horowitz. As for his support of the Iraqi war, it shares almost no relation to dubya's reasons. In some ways, I am almost sympathetic to his reasons, until the truth of the destruct ions comes to mind. As for women not being funny, well, it does not fit my experience. In other word, Hitchens is a complex person. Do not that him as "The Authority". Just think about what he has to say. And remember that he uses philosophy as a hammer.

Oh, yeah, it was like lightning, everybody was frighteningAnd the music was soothing, and they all started grooving

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, YeahAnd the man at the back saidEveryone attack and it turned into a bibleroom blitzAnd the girl in the corner saidBoy, I wanna warn ya, it'll turn into a bibleroom blitzBibleroom blitz, bibleroom blitz, bibleroom blitzBibleroom blitz

It seems to me that Hitchens said the the practice was filthy, not that Jews were filthy.

Hitchens has repeatedly lambasted anti-Semitism, particularly that of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, and other evangelicals who use Jews as props for their own passion play.

It's a wonder they get away with their anti-Semitism.

And remember that he uses philosophy as a hammer.

Heh. Yeah. And I prefer a "madman" who knows how to live to a pinched little slip of a man who shakes a severe finger at life. I find it so interesting that people who proclaim "irreducible complexity!" and blah blah, cannot handle such complexity and gray areas in life, or in people's personalities.

Sure you can. Just think up something. Maybe they were born with magic powers. Maybe they were blessed by pixies ans faeries. Maybe they only think they're saints. Maybe other people only think they're saints.

"You cannot explain the existence of saints without God." What a dumb thing to say. I'm sorry to have to say it, but Father George is not being very rational at all. Cuckoo!!

By the same token, you cannot explain the existence of Athens without Athena, huh? ;-)

Yeah, I love circular reasoning like that. When are people like Father Rutler going to figure out that there's no argument that gives their religious belief plausibility over any other, past or present?

Besides, Mother Theresa was not a saint. She deliberately kept her patients on hard cots and fed them crappy food out of her belief that one's lot in life was to "suffer with grace." She was a crock. She presented a face to the world that was not the reality (not that Rutler cares).

Christopher Hitchens is an unmitigated jackass. He turned on his old friend Sidney Blumenthal and never looked back.

He has quite a bit of talent as a writer (though less than HE thinks he has) and will take contrarian positions just to make noise and sell books.

As for the War in Iraq - we have NO BUSINESS BEING THERE. The US is a Rogue State - and not a single one of the MILLION dead civilians in Iraq deserve their early deaths at the hands of the US. None of our troops should be at war with any nation that didn't attack us. Period.

Exactly how did Iraq or Afghanistan attack us? The al Quida did not "own" Afghanistan - and the Taliban offered to extradite Bush's boogy-man to an Islamic nation - but W wouldn't have that.

We are now involved in two illegal wars, use torture (and have public discussions of torture while we consider the latest Attorney General nominated by W!) and are engaged in a long-term occupation of two sovereign nations. What the heck do you mean that you can't oppose an illegal, immoral, unconstitutional war?

How can you show your support to our troops? BRING THEM HOME!

Has the size of the "embassy" and our military bases escaped the muse? Does petro-politics elude you?

Settle down, George, if you expect answers. Don't come here and insult me. I don't do that to you. Behave like a gentleman (as Hitchens did to me), or get lost.

What the heck do you mean that you can't oppose an illegal, immoral, unconstitutional war?

Learn to read and quit acting so emotional. I've opposed this war from the beginning and said so. I was loathe to oppose a means to remove Saddam Hussein (being that we propped him up in the first place). I marched against this war. I got called a "terrorist" by people I knew (and no longer speak to) because I opposed this war.

That is not an excuse to invade these countries. I am simply stating a fact.

The U.S. is not going to replace its reliance on oil with "wind." That is a fantasy, as is hydrogen (which requires fossil fuels for its production), geothermal, solar, etc.

That is not an excuse to invade these countries. I am simply stating a fact.

China, India, and other developing nations are also entering the market for oil reserves.

That is not an excuse to invade these countries. I am simply stating a fact.

A very uncomfortable fact.

We went to war with Iraq for the same reason that we propped up Saddam Hussein in the first place (which I opposed as a high schooler): oil, and a strategic friend to hold the line against Iran (formerly another oil-rich friend).

Okay, bring the troops home. Then what? Bring them home, to what? A nation running on ethanol? Do you know what ethanol is doing to the environment?

Want to pay $10 a gallon or more for gas?

Can you imagine what will happen to this country, to everyone, even to car-free me, once oil becomes more difficult to access? Like it or not, our entire economy and civilization is based on oil. Believe me, I don't like it. But I'm not morally bankrupt enough to wish for a defeat for the U.S. or for the collapse of the U.S. economy. I wouldn't expect to survive that.

That is not an excuse to invade these countries. I am simply stating a fact.

Exactly how did Iraq or Afghanistan attack us? The al Quida did not "own" Afghanistan - and the Taliban offered to extradite Bush's boogy-man to an Islamic nation - but W wouldn't have that.

No, the Taliban "lost" Bin Laden - an invitation for us to pluck him (not bomb the country) out by ourselves. Afghanistan is an Islamic nation already. That was a bogus offer. It's a feint, something that W should have countered with another clever offer. He doesn't know anything about Arab culture. I'm not an expert, but I do know a few things.

The U.S. is not a rogue state. Don't come here and bandy that nonsense about. The U.S. is the people. As for the President, he is a rogue leader, and as far as I'm concerned, has impeached himself several times over.

Put your considerable energy into trying to get GW impeached, as I have, instead of squawking at me for not being pure enough.

You seem oblivious to the UN and our duties under various treaties not to engage in war.

Legacy of Ashes: the History of the CIA by Tim Weiner, Fair Game by Valerie Plame-Wilson, and What We Say Goes by Noam Chomsky are jam packed with 60 years of lies told the US Public by our government in support of the oil industry.

I am older than you are by more than a decade. I do not lightly suggest that your acceptance of our imperial wars is immoral.

My energy footprint is, no doubt, somewhat larger than yours - especially given my business travel. On the other hand, I've been a civil rights attorney who is married to the Law Library Director and I've been fighting for the tenure rights, against employment discrimination and for fair housing for decades. I also marched against the War in Viet Nam, opposed Israel's murderous ways since the Sabra and Shatilla massacres, and have materially opposed every US war/police action since the '60's.

It is nice that you don't use a car where public transportation and your life work.

Hybrid-fuel vehicles (we own two) can reach 50mpg if you keep your foot off the accelerator. Are you vegan? If not your carbon footprint is very large, indeed. Try reading: The Omnivore's Dilemma, a Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Poulan.

Try to imagine the fact that we hit peak oil about a decade ago. Transition to other power sources is imperative and a better use of our nation's funds than is war. Canada now has 1/3 of its diesel derived from hemp oil and the energy used to make this bio-diesel is offset by the additional products derived from the plant fiber used for cloth and paper. Try reading: The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartman.

Solar and geothermal are two grossly under-exploited power sources and fuel-cell systems are becoming affordable. Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House and set the nation on the path towards energy independence. Reagan reversed that and took down the solar panels.

Hitchens is a horse's butt and I again point you to Sidney Blumenthal's biography for a devastating example of Hitch's mendacity. Harris and Dawkins are far better writers and far more cogent - Hitch just cherry-picks the outrageous and exploits the interest in the freedom from religion movement with his God is Not Great. Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation covers the same ground and does it with the calculated argument of a scientist.

At root, the US is a nation that manufactures weapons and exports them only to go fight them. Money spent on a bomb or bullet is lost once the bomb explodes or the bullet is fired - making more is very profitable.

A child inoculated with DPT vaccine will never suffer from Diphtheria, Pertussis or Tetanus. That costs less than a handful of bullets and, over the long term, that child will produce and make a profit for the US that is greater than the short-term profits from weapons. Look up the accounts of the epidemics from 1900 on. Bodies were stacked in the streets of every major city. We are looking at the 1918 influenza pandemic reoccurring with the avian strain about to hop species. We ignore that threat to our survival while ranking terrorism as a higher risk - yet any epidemiologist will provide you with solid science supporting creating a crash program to prepare for the pandemic.

Wars are "real politic?" I beg your pardon, but the object of our parents' generation was to eliminate war - and Eisenhower aptly warned us about the alliance of the military and industry. We ignored that warning - from a general and president in 1961.

You seem oblivious to the UN and our duties under various treaties not to engage in war.

No I'm not.

I see only that I cannot express a nuanced position or ambiguous feelings without being painted with the same black and white swathes that I hate in every context.

It's rather like people assuming that because I'm an atheist I am as absolutist as they are, when in fact, one must learn to negotiate uncertainty in the world if one is going to travel and engage the world; calling me an "extremist," as if sentimental, vague (and to my mind, illogical) theism is some sort of middle ground between supernaturalism and naturalism.

I am older than you are by more than a decade. I do not lightly suggest that your acceptance of our imperial wars is immoral.

What a nonsequitor. What does my age have to do with anything? My parents didn't go to war to end all wars; they went to war to stop Germany and Japan. It was World War I that was the "war to end all wars." I think that's a fantasy. Obviously, it was.

I don't disagree with you about spending money on vaccines, etc. versus weapons. In fact, I told the person who subsequently called me a terrorist that someday we will be fighting Musharraf.

Even if what you are selling is "reality," on a blog it's still only theory.

What do we bring the troops home to? We have bases and an embassey in Iraq, now, so what does "bring the troops home" mean anymore?

What do we replace petroleum with?

How do we remove ourselves from Iraq without giving Al Qaeda the propogranda it wants?

"How do we remove ourselves from Iraq without giving Al Qaeda the propogranda it wants?"

I am afraid I am guilty of pulling out one quote and jumping on it but here it goes. Was not the invasion of Iraq all the propaganda Al Qaeda needed? Stay or leave, Al Qaeda can spin american actions to fit their desires. In the mean time, what good is being done?

As for there being bases in Iraq, well, I am sure you have read Chamers Johnson. So much money poured into these seats of american might.

I am saying that I don't see a good way out of this. Okay, so let's bring the troops home. But again I ask - bring them home, to what? Even John McCain admits (away from the TV cameras) that we're going to be in Iraq for the next 20 years.

I don't believe in simple answers. The last time someone told me, "I'm selling reality - are you buying?" I was in church. I don't purchase my reality from others. And for some things I don't think there are answers out there.

I have not read Chalmers Johnson, or Edward Said or Noam Chomskey. I tend to mean to read these people, then do not. I have my own ideas. And right now I'm afraid I have been overwhelmed with Michael Gorman, JASIST, and scholarly articles in Library Literature.

Check out "What We Say Goes" from a library - the book is full of transcriptions of short conversations with Prof. Chomsky. You could read 3 pages in a few minutes on the bus.

I don't know what you think when you say that WWII was not the war to end all wars- we abandoned the failed league of nations and created the United Nations (HQ in my home town, NYC) and we have executed dozens of treaties forswearing wars of aggression, pacts for mutual defense and created NATO etc. The US Constitution in Article I holds Treaties (ratified by the Senate) as the Law of the Land.

At the end of WWII where our parents and their older siblings / parents had just endured two massive European wars and a Pacific War together with the development of Nuclear weapons - they set about creating a framework to end war. We were a major part of the international group of nations that formed the UN and entered into those treaties and the goal was never to send our troops into war again.

Then came the Korean Police Action (Not a War) and Viet Nam (Not a War) and our little proxy wars here and there and our invasions of Grenada, Occupation of Lebanon (and Reagan pulled out after 288 Marines were killed by a truck bomb- you see, it is JUST THAT EASY). The supplying of arms to both Iran and Iraq for a prolonged war costing millions of lives, two Iraqi wars and Afghanistan (You should read Charlie Wilson's War to learn how we taught the combatants the skills and gave them the tools to wage war against the Soviet Union - and, to use that training against us on September 11, 2001)

Perhaps you could consider whether the Islamic "radicals" have a legitimate point? Would you want them invading us? We had no business starting these wars and we should pick up and leave. When you are in a hole the first thing you do is to stop digging.

You are in your 40's - you were not aware of the Watergate Hearings and the fact that a single telephone tap was a count in the impeachment action brought against Nixon. You didn't live with Henry Kissinger and his grossly illegal expansion of the war in Viet Nam into Laos, Cambodia and - to a degree, Thailand. You have not schooled yourself in the history of the CIA and COINTELPRO and the Church Committee or you wouldn't be ambivalent about these wars.

Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner covers the 60 years of the CIA and its activities around the globe. My Sister-in-law is a Guatemalan National (a Psychologist married to my brother-in-law a LANL Scientist working for SAIC) who watched her nation destroyed by United Fruit and the CIA.

Ollie North, Admiral Poindexter (of Total Information Awareness fame in the Bush administration - our wiretapping and Internet interception can be traced right back to the Admiral) and so many other things can be traced back to Nixon's administration where Rumsfeld and Cheney served - just as they served Reagan, Bush I and W.

Doesn't it strike you as odd that "W" is president? If the same story came to us from some banana republic we would recognize rank corruption. Today we have the son of the former director of the CIA placed in office by 5 members of the Supreme Court - overriding the 10th Amendment Right of the sovereign State of Florida to conduct elections as it chooses? Interesting that the candidate's brother was the governor of the state that gave him the presidency, eh?

You can't blindly follow power - and war, and manufacturing weapons - is just as wrong as religion - and it is abetted by religion. God is always on the side of the warriors and those killed in war will be rewarded in the afterlife that does not exist.

What is the status of this nation in the world today? What can each of us do to change that?

Our newspapers are owned by five corporations. Dan Rather has a $60meg lawsuit over his termination for telling the truth about "W" - yet, we don't hear much about that. We have the "fair and balanced" Fox News and the Rev. Moom's Washington Times as propaganda outlets for the militarists and religious nut-cases.

Like it or not, blogging is the new pamphleteering and Thomas Paine would be active as hell blogging.

Try this bit of history from February 9, 1792:

http://www.ushistory.org/paine/rights/index.htm

Paine said,

If the miseries of war, and the flood of evils it spreads over a country, did not check all inclination to mirth, and turn laughter into grief, the frantic conduct of the government of England would only excite ridicule. But it is impossible to banish from one's mind the images of suffering which the contemplation of such vicious policy presents. To reason with governments, as they have existed for ages, is to argue with brutes. It is only from the nations themselves that reforms can be expected. There ought not now to exist any doubt that the peoples of France, England, and America, enlightened and enlightening each other, shall henceforth be able, not merely to give the world an example of good government, but by their united influence enforce its practice.

That's where I'm coming from. This is not a personal attack - it is history, law, philosophy and reality. One cannot take a position unless one is well informed - hence our 1st Amendment. The Internet is all that we have left to seek information and to provision ourselves against the reactionaries who blindly follow power (or, God).

We walk out of the middle east, drop AIPAC on its head, cut the military materiel exports (they are regulated anyway, let's cut them to 1% of our GNP - the world has enough weapons) and start putting Thomas Paine's & Thomas Jefferson's ideas to work in the last superpower.

While we are at it, we ought to extradite W and his cadre to the Hague and let them stand trial - if they did no wrong what do they have to worry about? What other reason but fear of being prosecuted for war crimes keeps the US from recognizing the World Court's jurisdiction over us? The US had no problem with trying Slobodan Milosevic. What makes us immune to their jurisdiction?

You could (though probably not on the bus) go through this blog and read everything that I have said about the Iraq War. Your simplistic caricature of me because I express in one post some complex emotions about uncomfortable facts is unfair, and tiresome.

Right now I do my considerably heavy schoolwork load on the bus in between school, job, and adjusting to a new city.

I don't know how it logically follows that I am not old enough to live through, and thus thoroughly understand, these events (do you honestly think I'm uninformed about the CIA or Watergate), and then the target of your criticism for allegedly not schooling myself which, due to my lack of existence during these events, I cannot know about anyway.

Your self-righteousness is noted. Your constant reference to my age (not unlike that of Legion's although he thought me too old to express my opinion) is also.

Goodbye. Find someone else to insult.

Let me know when you have solved some of these problems instead of venting your frustration on my time, and calling me ignorant on all things off-topic. Pronounce me ignorant, and have done with it. (This from someone who joked about the bridge collapse.)

It seems ironic to me that those who advocate "peace" are the angriest and most criticizing people - probably because, in "avoiding conflict," they create conflict with their immediate neighbor by demanding that human beings not act like, well, human beings.

Conflict is a part of life. (The above is an example, paradoxically.) War, dare I say it, is quite natural. I don't like that, but were it not so, it would be easy to get rid of. One cannot look at the animal world, particularly the social insects, and say that "war is unnatural."

I don't "accept our imperial wars," but I accept that wars happen and will happen, for various reasons. Just saying, "I don't know how anybody thinks war is the answer!" is extremely arrogant, in my view. It sets up the speaker as being somehow superior to others. Well, people act as people act; if we want to solve problems of group behavior, we need to stop expressing righteous indignation that people in groups act like mobs, and start accepting how people really are.

In my experience, these people who are "shocked" by violence and emotion in human beings don't see that they are in fact waging their own wars in their private lives without acknowledging it.

P.S. In finally expressing these opinions, which I didn't feel I could before, I also feel like I've just escaped a cult.

Kristine, I left a comment earlier and it never made it on the blog. Since then, it looks like you've been given quite a bit of grief for entertaining the possibility that, in the real world, the use of force might sometimes be warranted. How sad, especially your observation that you've escaped from something like a cult.

My two cents on Hitchens is that he is a good example of how someone can be incredibly cultivated, yet not terribly civilized--in either the collective or personal senses.

Doesn't make him wrong or right about Iraq, etc. though.

On a lighter note, I'd like some feedback on music. You might recall I suggested it might be interesting to have a dance-friendly mashup that employed snippets from the Cars' song 'Drive'. I'd like to give that a whirl, but I'm really in the dark about what sort of music you find most useful or admirable to accompany your dancing. If you could send a short list of suggestions for listening either at my email (epigene13@gmail.com) or on my blog, as you have time, it would be most helpful.

I do want to clarify that my "cult" comment was not about the person above, but another person, that I could not be honest with for fear of condemnation.

My two cents on Hitchens is that he is a good example of how someone can be incredibly cultivated

Well, I did call him the Ernest Hemingway of atheism.

I use Middle Eastern dance music - mostly arrangements of classical tunes by Hossam Ramzy - for dancing. However, I have been thinking of branching out to more experimental music. However, I have not been dancing lately. I'm not sure how I would dance to the Cars' "Drive," but I have thought about using REM's "Drive."